Man... every time I read your posts I really want to go buy some booze. I wonder why that is?[/QUOTE
I feel the same way, it's what the Nez Perce bastardly called the Hoka Doka, or Hoka Doke, which roughly translated means it's good to Doke. It derives from the Lakota Sioux. Similar to the Hoka Hey, it's a good day to die. It's the Hoka Hey, without the Hey but the Doke. It's hard to explain without the hang gestures. I was in a Blackfoot sweat lodge one night. I was out on a summer night with the Jeep with the doors and top of fin my underwear and I noticed a truck. So I pulled and put some clothes on. All Indian affair. It was my friend McAtee. McAtee, FBI, Fucking Big Indian. It was more or less a pot party but with drunk punch, the residue of the Margarito/Clottey fight, everyone just milling about, 2 of the three Clint brothers are there high school pals, I was the only white man. There was only maybe twelve people, but two of the biggest Indians in the state, powerlifters. Mitch is one of the most imposing sonofabitches you've ever seen, probably 6'3" 290/310. My schtick since high school was no matter what he's doing when I see, a bar, the street, the grocery store, he always has a beautiful woman under his arm, always talking to somebody, I walk in front of him, invade his space and pretend he's not there. It always looks like suicide and it freaks people out that I'm some rando and I'm gonna get fucking killed, and it always catches him off guard. We hug like old idiots and then I proceed to tell whoever he's with that I used to look out for him when we were little kids.
One St. Patricks day, I know I posted this here, i brought the bar back to my place, there was probably 80 people in a trailer. I'm talking to this girl, the world goes away, I'm in a bubble. I plop down on the couch and amid the ruckus, I'm staring straight into the eyes of this tall rattty blonde hippy girl, we're just looking at each other, no blink, no cry, she's sitting on the floor leaning back on a book shelf, she reaches over and grabs an acoustic guitar
sheets of empty canvas
untouched sheets of clay
were laid out spread before me
as her body once did
all five horizons
revolved around her soul
as the earth to the sun
now all the air that I tasted and breathed
has taken a turn.
I realize this is a tangent, but it will all play out. This girl, how do explain magic, you can't. This was in the top ten days of my life. My trailer was a honeycomb, everybody everywhere and few familiar faces. This gypsy is strait across from me, legs akimbo, singing this directly to me among the chaos, everything fell away. You may think all my shit is shit, we'll never meet, but I really hope you don't. I mean this was a wild St. P bar party cars parked at K-Mart to get over, I literally went around the bar as their doing last call, told everyon follow me, or just follow the cars. I'm also pals with Bill the insane bartender. I big wrestling champ and more a lunatic than I am. He was a senior when I was a sophomore, we weren't pals, he was the fucking man, I am who am, and wordsmith that I am, I couldn't go anywhere without a sketch pad. Like a court stenographer, I would draw the party and the occupants. Apgar's Keg, here comes this big bastard with a full keg on his shoulder lumbering up a dirt trail in the dark, hahaha.
There's thing, I call it the Tom Waits thing, but I've been doing the same shit my entire life, you should see my jr. high yearbook writings. It's not a trick or a gimmick, it's not even self conscious, well I mean it has been of late, but never was. It was a Letterman show, and I'm alone in the dark, probably drinking, and Tom is talking about this horse who chewed on his stall, the image of horse jumping out of a stall. And then he moves on to something else, and Dave says WTF? did you just say, hold on here, what? And Tom says, do you doubt me Dave, that hurts, that hurts that you would say that, deep inside. ...do you want to see the pictures? Yeah, I wanna see the pictures, he reaches in his inner jacket and hands him the pictures, and Dave is dumbfounded, "Oh my God, he's right"
That's a tangent, but I hadn't seen Bill in years and he's bartending. For Halloween he wore a white butcher's apron behind the bar, all night. Funny in itself, but he's stark naked. Bill has a John Holmes cock, it's dangling under the butcher's apron as he's walking beers to tables. I mean, this is the man. We've partied so many times and shut down the bar, and almost every time I go to leave, Bill says still around, I've got us something. I could follow up all those stories, but this night we were just bumping into one another "Tommy! Holy Fuck!", what the hell?, hugs, not the apron night. He bought me a tequila and a Jaegarbomb, I said I gotta go home, i'll be back in a minute. I dug through some old steamer trunks and came back with the drawing's from the Apgar keg and him coming up the hill with a keg. Blew both our minds. I'll dig it out some day and post the pic. I'm not Picasso, these are Don Martin, Sergio Aragones half-stick figure people. The cops came, I was standing next to the senior head cheerleader, so I grabbed her and drug her though the woods, at some point we stumbled into a barn and got into an old sad red dodge truck in the barn. I said we should probably go, and walked about eight miles in the ditches at night, with the cop cars carryint our friends shuffling by. i don't know how big the party was, but the two of us were the only ones who got away. We didn't screw, we were both too tired, could hardly move, we did take a shower together and I got to play with her huge boobs, and we crashed down in her bed. I got up to pee and came out of her bedroom and nearly walked into her old jock brother, if looks could kill, the gave me the maloik.
This was a Saturday, come Monday everyone's talking, and thought I got busted. When I told them what happened, they said bullshit. You'd expect the senior head cheerleader would just blow me off. But she shaw and came running up and gave me a hug and we talked for a minute. The pals were dumbstruck, I was dumbstruck. She was absolute sweetheart, and deserved to be the prom queen, she wasn't the prom queen, but she shoulda been. Those moments when no one believes you and you just go about your life. It sucks, but who really cares. I tell my Bill Birthday story. It was an October whiteout blizzard, and I was gonna stay home and drink and watch tv, but the little basard with the axe compelled me, I hop in the Jeep, go to the bar, there's not one car in the parking lot, and it's near closing time. you know term "take you down a peg"? ...it's an old Irish bar term, the superdrunks all had their own 24oz, or whatever it may be, glass. And it sat on a wooden peg behind the bar. Just a sign of respect, and if you didn't show up for a long time, they would take you down a peg. Anyway, I sit down, almost all the lights were off and he's doing the buffalo. There's a rubber bar pad you don't notice that collects all the spilled liquor and tips. The call it the buffalo. So, Bill is wringing out the buffalo, they also put some of the buffalo in asshole's mixed drinks.
So this Pabst draft comes rolling down the bar in my glass. I'm the only one in the bar, it's a Montana snow globe. I have a white 77 CJ with a a built 350 and 33s, everytime I touch the gas I spin in a circle, I have no heater and my wipers don't work. So the beer slides, I'm drinking the beer in the near dark pondering the mutability of human affairs as Bill is shutting down shop. I drink in silence, Bill rolls a refill. Out of the darkness, this 5'7' girl walks out of the darkness and sits way over alone at the bar. Without a word Bill pours 4 shots of tequila and lays them down in front of her. She tosses one back, and I'm transfixed. She makes that involuntary mandatory baby trying their first pineapple face. So she shiver, Bill goes in the back. She takes off her shirt, not only am I drunk, I'm hallucinating. She takes offer her shirt, then she takes off her bra, she has elk antlers tattooed around her tits. She gets up off the stool, climbs on the bar and lays down. I'm beyond gobsmacked. I'm in a twilight zone, Bill comes out of the back, presses her hips downs, and takes the second shot and pours it in her bellybutton. Get over here you piece of shit, I didn't think you were gonna show. Happy Birthday piece of shit. He hand's me a shot and clinks and pulls out an old polaroid instamatic and takes a picture of me doing the belly button tequila shot. He's blowing on like the maestro and hands it to me.
We ended up, like a hundred other nights, Stick around Tom, I'll be done in a minute. The three of us and a case of Pabst bottles from the back. As I came to, we're all three ass naked on the couch, she has her arms around me, Bill and his ridiculous are slobbering on her shoulder, the morning birds are doing that annoying shit they do. Scooch out to piss and find a beer. Splitin maul to the head, look for my clothes and somehow drive home. Time doesn't matter, might have been hours smelt like minutes the phone rings some old woman I can't process. She says, I don't know who you are, but I went in his house and yours was the top number, you friend is naked in my yard and I'm gonna call the police when I hang up. I got him inside and the police did show up.
Whatever rhe fucking point was I was going for, it always stings when you're sincere but know no one is gonna believe ya.
sidebar, we were in a record store when Real Gone came out, and I imagined I jumped like a little bitch and went and grabbed. A few weeks latter there's a knock on the door and there's a guy with a package. My wife had asked if we could have the promo poster when they were done, and she framed it and put it on the wall of my den. ...C'mon.
